Their problem isn't the quantity of games. The reality is there are already too many game releases across the industry. It's a very crowded market. Beyond silly to suggest that doing more AA games would somehow be a boon for them.
There being more games releasing in the market doesn't mean much if a lot of them are getting ignored. Plus, this is specifically about SIE; 3P games that aren't on their platform do nothing for increasing their profits or giving them market leverage in the gaming space. Why would they care about there being lots of games released and use that as an excuse to not have more 1P output?
And if they
could increase that 1P output with AA games, why would they not do so, if that leads to more revenue, more profits, and more market leverage through IP they own? Also SIE have been in this business for decades; they know how to "cut through the noise" and get their games noticed in a crowed market. They've been doing it since the PS1.
Your mistake is by suggesting that buying Paramount is a solution to their problem with AAA games. Who said that? No one. Paramount solves a lot of things for Sony and does boost Sony first party, but no one said that reduces dev times. One thing it does do though is give them big IP that they can own and not pay massive licensing fees for.
Well, if that's
my mistake,
your mistake is assuming that Sony purchasing Paramount benefits SIE 1P games content. There's no proof that would actually be the case. Yes we can assume in some ways it would be, like with SpongeBob for example. But with a lot of the other IP, I don't see that working. Because, if it were to work, I think we'd of already seen some of it with SIE/Sony Pictures crossover.
Like, where is the Breaking Bad game (yes I know AMC might co-own the rights but I'm sure they'd have no problem giving SIE the license for a AAA BB game)? Bad Boys game? Underworld game? And Underworld in particular would've made a
GREAT spiritual follow-up to Bloodborne, hell they could've used the Bloodborne engine and game mechanics, changed a bit around, get Kate Beckinsale & other people involved and had an Underworld action/adventure AAA game. Not to mention, Kate & several others from the films have expressed interest in continuing the series; maybe as a game that would've made sense.
So you see, Sony Pictures already has a lot of IP that could've made for some cool SIE games, but it's never happened. And now you want me to think it's suddenly going to happen if Sony buys Paramount? That's ridiculous.
This is a silly statement by someone who definitely doesn't work in the corporate world. Sony's PC ambitions are fueled by an expansion of their PC Strategy teams up to and including the purchase of Nixxes. This idea that this is a detriment to consoles is pure fanboy FUD.
It's
already been detrimental to their console focus.
-1P AAA games are taking longer not just because of budget increases but also incorporating part of the PC development into the pipeline. Naughty Dog have confirmed this in a way themselves. We've seen proof of this now with Wolverine from Insomniac. The main reason for TLOU2 Remastered was to justify a PC port of TLOU2, same for making TLOU Remake. A lot of the GAAS push was to justify more PC releases in a "less contentious" matter. Instead a good number of those games have been cancelled, also affecting 1P content for PS consoles.
-Console version of games have seen bugs introduced around the time of PC versions being released, with cross-play features turned on. Ghosts of Tsushima saw this problem recently.
-Scaling development for a range of PC spec configurations in addition to growing console targets (PS5, PS5 Pro) means less time and resources for per-spec optimizations, even with the staggered release window.
So no, it's not "fanboy FUD" (considering I've been critical of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo a lot I fail to see how I'm a fanboy of any of them at this point). It's reality.
It's not evident at all. At a time where platforms scale, it's easier than ever to develop one game and have it on PC, console, and handheld.
Then I guess issues like Baldur's Gate 3 dropping local co-op for Series S, Starfield dropping 60 FPS at launch on console because of Series S, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor's rampant problems on PC at launch etc. shouldn't be happening.
Yet, they are :/
They released to successful movies and one of the most successful tv shows of all time... Helldivers is one of their most successful games of all time. Talk about not paying attention...
And at the same time, they may've damn likely botched their one big GAAS hit/potential future "COD killer" on PC/Steam, they cancelled their Twisted Metal game when it should've released to coincide with the TV show premier (or shortly after the season was finishing up), they STILL haven't done something as common-sense as a F2P port of MLB to mobile with fantasy league features...
..there is
NO telling if TLOU Season 2 will be a hit especially if they stick to the game's story & kill Joel off early on, there's still been no mention of when or even if Uncharted will be returning in game form...so on and so forth.
You're the same person that said PSVR2 on PC would be streaming. A lot of people on forums have bad analysis, that doesn't make all analysis bad.
I said that because it would make sense for SIE to do that for console owners of PSVR2. It adds value to the product for them, especially if they feel there won't be as many ports to the device as there were in the past, or should be going forward (due to slow sales).
Finance/banking brings in good money, but it is not a growth sector nor does it have synergies with the rest of Sony. SIE is being told to tighten up not because they're not profitable but because they can be more profitable. That has nothing to do with SPE. SPE is not fledgling lol and Sony just spent nearly 4 billion on Bungie and hundreds of millions on other studios in the last few years.
Sony Pictures has had more misses than hits over the past few years, and that's a fact. SIE buying Bungie ($3.6 billion, not $4 billion, and $1.2 billion of that $3.6 billion was for bonuses to be paid out over time so upfront cost was just $2.4 billion) shouldn't bar them from making similar investments for other areas of gaming when the Bungie deal was specifically for GAAS content.
Sony Corp wanting to sell the finance/banking sector is indicative of bad judgement; you don't need to throw out
EVERYTHING that might otherwise be stable and bring in a great flow of income just because it doesn't have immediate synergies with other parts of your company. Arguably speaking, Microsoft used that position themselves with the direction they felt to take Xbox in over the past decade and it could be said that is actually what helped contribute to Xbox's demise as a console brand. Instead of letting the gaming people like J. Allard or Seamus Blackley or Peter Moore do what they did best, in their own space with no larger corporate interference for "synergies", Microsoft wanted to bring Xbox right in line with the rest of the corporate structure.
That has clearly had mostly negative effects for Xbox as a console, and we're here cheering for Sony Corp to do the same to SIE/PlayStation just because they want to push a company-wide transmedia "synergies" strategy? Can you
not see the same potential road bumps and pitfalls at play here, or are we blinded by this false idea that "Sony don't miss"?
And again Paramount helps all of Sony more than any game publisher would help all of Sony.
No; Paramount mainly helps Sony Pictures, and does little for SIE. And we can say this with confidence because Sony Pictures hasn't done much for SIE vs. what it
COULD have been doing for SIE with more cooperate and creatively-driven minds of leadership at Sony Pictures and SIE.
A games publisher would benefit SIE much more, and this idea that all M&As have to serve all or as many parts of the company at once as possible, is a "jack of all trades, master of none" approach in effect. Sometimes (nay, likely often), targeted M&As for specific purposes produce better results.
Then you can synergize those M&As into a larger operation.
Because of some whiny PC gamers? No, people in the business know that all companies require a 2nd login, so they're certainly not going to avoid working with sony because of an industry standard practice.
No. Because if SIE are willing to let a dispute between themselves and a 3P dev spill out publicly this way, that may make other 3P devs wonder if they could be put in a similar situation where they have to face public backlash or scrutiny over a decision potentially out of their control. These devs have reputations they want to uphold, and the less negativity the better.
Whether it's Arrowhead or SIE who are ultimately at fault with this HB2 fiasco (or Microsoft; people seem to have forgotten that Arrowhead are using Azure servers here), the fact is as the platform holder & publisher, SIE could've handled the situation better. That's expected of a company in their position.
Tidal makes sense for them, but that doesn't mean SIE and PlayStation are dismissing... lol
It does if it leads to no significant investments for SIE & PlayStation to a similar degree. And again, going "But Bungie!" doesn't work when that was for a very specific type of game and doesn't account for other areas of game investment SIE would benefit significantly from.
His point was that having a home where these shows can stream makes a lot of sense rather than pitching them to different networks like Amazon, HBO, Peacock, Netflix.
Which is absolutely stupid, because the streaming market is already contracting due to too many competing subscription services! So you're saying that Sony should pitch their own streaming service to the market, possibly losing billions and billions every year as they struggle to grow the install base to an acceptable level...and you somehow think that wouldn't negatively impact SIE along the way?
The current strategy of licensing out content to other services is precisely why Sony Pictures don't have the problems of Paramount, or WB Discovery, or HBO Max etc. Let
those companies burn through billions and billions while Sony Pictures collects money off licensing the content. It'd also be very stupid (but funny) of them to try leveraging Paramount for their own subscription service when they already own two anime streaming services, and already seem to have issues with the investments required for PlayStation as a hardware platform. But somehow the R&D, marketing costs etc. for a streaming subscription service would be worth it and no fuss?
Nah, I don't buy it.
EDIT: I guess you are suggesting that Sony would just leverage Paramount+...well that would save them some money and time on building their own streaming service, but it still would be an uphill battle IMO.
For starters there's no telling if Paramount+ is particularly profitable right now. Logic would suggest if it were, or if the prognosis seemed very well, they wouldn't be in a position of needing to sell. Maybe they did have favorable projections for subscriber & revenue growth of the service, but them as-is couldn't sustain a way to hit those projections, therein selling to a company like Sony works out better for them?
Just as Disney removed their marvel shows from Netflix and put them on Disney+
And how much money did Disney lose over the years with that stunt before finally starting to break even on their sub service? Better question: how exactly are Disney's financials looking these days?
Last I saw, not great. Lord knows what debts they're working through between that and buying Fox.
If these shows can help grow Paramount+ AND be a consistent home for their shows, they can be more profitable rather than splitting the pot with the names above.
Okay, sure. But that's a big "IF" being asked, and any costs needed on Sony's end to make it so would be on top of whatever's being paid to acquire Paramount.
Not sure of any internal development studios that Paramount owns, but their IP will do much better with Sony first party and Sony chosen 3rd party development studios working on their IP.
Again, you're assuming benefits for SIE in this which are a complete unknown and, going by the lack of relative synergy between Sony Pictures and SIE the past couple of decades (in terms of Sony Pictures IP getting games made by SIE where it would've made perfect sense, i.e the Underworld game built off the back & tech of Bloodborne I suggested way earlier)...
...why have this faith that there's suddenly be strong synergy between Paramount IP and SIE for gaming content? There's zero precedent to suggest that would happen.
.
